Glasgow’s Galloping Gallantry: What Amazing Help!

Maybe it says something about how much I’ve become accustomed to German-style service, but I’ve been blown away by the gallantry of Glasgowians.

From the moment I arrived, Thursday at lunchtime, everyone and everything has been great, with the exception of the Glasgow Flyer bus driver who pulled away from the airport when I was about 20 seconds from reaching the bus.

Seriously.

I haven’t encountered as much cheerful helpfulness as I have here in years. It started with getting off the bus in downtown Glasgow.

I needed to find a Barclay’s Bank in order to get cash from one of its ATMs – Barclay’s is a partner of Deutsche Bank and I can use its ATMs for free. I walked into the branch at 90 St. Vincent Street, only to find the ATM inside was broken. A charming man, with an accent to die for, asked if he could assist me—and I explained that the ATM was down and that I needed an ATM.

After quickly understanding why, which just took me uttering, “I am a Deutsche Bank customer,” he inspected the ATM outside, and when it too was broken, he immediately got the one inside fixed—just for me. He even implicitly understood why I needed the ATM and couldn’t get cash over the counter.

Most impressive–combined with his helpfulness, hot accent, and general good looks, I wanted to invite him out to lunch.

Better judgment prevailed.

From there I stumbled down the street and into the nearest Royal Mail Post Office, where I bought some stamps – and again, without prompting, the woman behind the counter provided me everything I asked for, and then some.

Later, after buying a shirt for Celtic, the only other football club in Europe worth supporting after FC St. Pauli, I wandered into the Waterstone’s at 174-176 Argyle Street with my book shopping list. An extremely helpful clerk found one of my two books instantly, and when he couldn’t find the other, he looked it up on a computer and then said, “We have only one copy of it right now, let me go grab it for you,” and then proceeded to run up a very long set of stairs and brought it back down to me.

Most impressive – actually I was stunned. I couldn’t imagine something like that happening in America—the clerk would have told me to find it on the 2nd floor by myself.

Really I am quite happy with my long weekend in Glasgow. I’m actually here visiting friends, and today I went with a friend to the Mugdock County Park, which is a relatively large park with varied scenery and lots of hiking trails. Much of the scenery in the park was fantastic—with, from my perspective the only downside being the number of dogs: it’s a dog walkers paradise and only one in every 25 or 30 dogs is actually on a leash.

Fortunately I never stepped in any poo.

Tomorrow further adventures!